The beach near the mainland Chinese village of Gezhou, code named
"Mike," looked deserted in the moonlight. Just offshore, in a glassy
South China sea, a crew member on the seagoing tugboat Michael signaled
inland with three sharp flashes of a hand-held light. Almost
immediately, three answering flashes came from the shadowy trees at the
edge of the 300-yd. beach. Suddenly, hundreds of figures swarmed
silently down to the water's edge, where they had a brief and emotional
rendezvous with their foreign visitors. The long-awaited...